Thursday, August 18, 2016

Playing with my Beads...Retro Fans Earrings with Candy Beads

I've made lots of samples with the 8mm 2-hole Candy beads in the past few days but I haven't been able to take photos of them yet. Yesterday the sun came out just long enough for me to take pictures of these two sample earrings. The pattern that I used is Monika Extrano's "Retro Fans Earrings" which I originally blogged about HERE. Below is a photo of one pair that I made back in 2015 according to the pattern instructions:

Original Retro Fans Earrings

I tweaked the bottom part of the earring a little bit this time and left off the SuperDuo bead that hangs down in the center. I like how that looks and there are no SuperDuo holes left open. Instead of adding a SuperDuo in the center at the bottom, I replaced it with an 11/0 seed bead. That seems to work fine with both Toho and Miyuki seed beads.

They're a bit snug but I managed to get the Candy beads to fit inside the openings at the top of the earrings. The tricky part was figuring out where to attach them to the seed beads in the earring by going through each of the two holes. I got the black Candy bead attached a little more securely than the gold one. The gold one looks fine but the bead is a little more prone to popping up slightly on that one.

11/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457)

8/0 seed beads Miyuki "Dark Bronze" (457)

8mm 2-hole Candy beads "Jet"

SuperDuo beads "Lustre Gold"

11/0 seed beads Toho "Antique Bronze" (223)

8/0 seed beads Toho "Antique Bronze" (223)

8mm 2-hole Candy beads "Matte Golden Olive"

SuperDuo beads "Turquoise"

You can buy Monika's earring pattern in her Etsy shop HERE. You can get 2-hole Candy beads at Queen City Bead on Etsy HERE.